Hi Rick,
First, thanks for posting. Have there been any serious efforts to debunk this guy? For example, I suspect that his time machine GE/C204 is a mobile receiver unit used by the military.
Iva - some "debunking". Not really anything serious I would say. Most folks have taken a "side" in the issue and most generally I would say everyone has an opinion, scientific or not, but rarely has anyone posted (anywhere to my knowledge) anything other than firm "opinions". My own included in that for that matter.
Pesonally, I have spent a lot of time going through his previous posts of the first couple of years when I wasn't actually involved in communication with him, and I took some of his material and set up an "experiment".
I'll give a few details here.
First I ASSUME for the sake of argument that John Titor IS a time traveler, and second that he is "telling the truth" about everything he says.
Secondly, we took his statement of "I will NOT make ANY predictions" to heart, and assume he makes no "predictions.
Thirdly, since the first and second things above we're assuming are true, we asked questions of him. People asked things like "What is your world like".
Those answers while not "predictions" per se, are statements of "fact" as "he knows it". In other words, if he IS from the future, and he IS telling the truth, and his time line is NOT MUCH different from our own time line, it stands to reason that anything he is telling us is reasonably OUR FUTURE (with some deviation, of 2.5% or so - more on that later).
Thus, we have statements of "fact" about what something is like in the future. This defacto becomes a "prediction" - not in the traditional sense, but a prediction nonetheless.
I took about 100 statements he made and listed them as "predictions". These were statements about how such and such a thing was, or will be, about the nuclear war, the "Waco-like incidents" and so forth.
No where did I find anything about stockmarkets, 9/11 attack, or something like that. Just random, real statements about what the future is like from his personal point of view.
My hypothesis is "John Titor is a Time Traveler" and the proofs will be in the statements, at least on a semi-scientific study of those things he said.
For instance... if 97.5% of the list comes true, then without any doubt in my mind I can say "John Titor is a time traveler". If anything less than that amount comes true, say 85%, then we can say "John is likely a time traveler". If 50% or less comes true we can reasonably say "John was NOT a time traveler".
Here is where I got the numbers.
In the discussions of the time machine there were some "deviation factors". The further you traveled from your origin (2036) the greater the deviation. At 76 years from your point of origin, the actual "time line deviation is 2.5%". Without having much further information than "things start happening differently" (one of his statements which comes to mind) and "the further beyond 76 years, things get weird" (to paraphrase since I don't have the actual material in front of me) I can ONLY make a wild assed assuption here.
That assumption is that any given thing has a 100% chance of happening "again". And the further you drift from a given time line, the more changes will happen. That is, things WON'T happen as they did in say, our time line. (I hope that is clear).
I took 2036 - 76 and that gives me 1960. So if he traveled back to 1976 then things would have been "weird". So, we will assume WORST CASE. That is, he has at least a 2.5% deviation "factor" from his actual time line. That means of 100 RANDOM things in his time line only 97.5 of them will occur as he leaves his time line (left it, is going to leave... whatever!).
Ok... So... IF John is a TT, then all of the things on that list I typed up long ago ought to occur.
The problem (one of many) is that many of those things were somewhat subjective. That means that even if this were a true scientific experiment (which it is only as close as I could get given the circumstances) then if he is a TT they will come true. At least 97.5% of the 100 things will. Anything LESS indicates that he probably is NOT a real time traveler.
About the Time Machine... I am a 26 year military veteran. I'm a radio guy by trade. I'm familiar with nearly every sort of radio system the USAF uses anywhere, and most of the Army's gear. I'm familiar with a lot of other radio gear because I've been involved in radio for well over 30 years personally.
In the images we received that were from John, of the time machine, there were things in the images I DO recognize. One is a small yellow box with a big dial on it. That was a geiger counter. I was very familiar with that particular device because I had several of those in some of my old tactical gear many years ago.
As for the time travel "device" itself... I have been unable to find ANYTHING that even comes close - except the external box itself. Someone else (whose name escapes me) actually found a box like that, painted green, made of high impact plastic and is precisely what the military uses to house certain types of gear. Generally gear is transported in them, and not installed as this TT device appeared to be.
In other words, I do not personally believe that the time travel device is actually some other piece of gear that has been modified to look as it does in the images. In other words, it isn't some piece of gear that was made for some other purpose.
Whether or not it is REAL - I can't say. I CAN say though that if I wanted to reproduce a device that looks like that thing, and appears to have some functions, I could do so. I am an electronics engineer.
On the other hand, the schematics I saw, limited as they were had some very interesting aspects to them,and from both an electronics engineering standpoint and physics standpoint they were well drawn (or thought out) and DID indeed APPEAR to come from scans of an original manual.
Other than that, I can't say for sure they were real or hoaxed. If they are a hoax, they are well done.
Now... for the record... and published for what amounts to be the "first time" even though I've said this in chat rooms...
Personally, I do not believe John Titor was a time traveler. I believe he furnished a well done "history", or "psychological study" of the human mind though. He was either a very good SF writer, who was practicing on the rest of us normal humans, or was doing this out of sheer need to attract a large amount of attention. Apparently he did.
On the other hand, being open minded, I will say that until someone proves it absolutely to have been a hoax (with honest records, and hardware - say, the time machine itself) then I will not close out the possibility in my own mind that he was real.
A "true debunker" will have an eye for finding pieces of the puzzle that do not fit, not showing the guy was "an idiot" or "anyone that believes him is an idiot" etc. I've seen WAY too much of that over the past few years. Instead, a real honest to goodness "debunker" will find the parts of his "science" that are wrong. So far, I've not seen anyone do that, not anywhere. Then again, I've not seen everything written on this subject yet and it grows daily. Perhaps we will never know... for sure.
Rick Donaldson